I hate UPS

I am so frustrated with UPS. I'm waiting for a book delivery. We paid for premium delivery. 

We have the tracking number and followed our package to Perpignan, the closest city to us.

For three days they have said that they could not deliver because twice no one was home and today the delivery was refused. All three times we've been home when they lied about trying to deliver. We work from home. It is a small apartment facing the street and we have a barking dog. 

The street is in a French village and one car width wide. We could not have missed hearing them if they knocked or if they'd rung the bell. 

There was never notification in the mail box.

Today we were home and stayed near the door. What terrible service.

Last year the same thing happened. Three alleged delivery attempts when we were home. Three lies.  

Writing this essay is the only outlet I can think. 

I see they are about to lay people off. I would suggest they start over and create a system that works, because this is not acceptable.

Free Write Time Flies

As a prompt Julia gave us a quote by comedian Godfrey Just for this Tuesday's Free Write. “Times flies, we stumble.”  We are still writing from two countries: Switzerland and France. Hopefully next week we'll be at the same café.

 Julia's Free Write

She was desperately trying to get it all done: company was expected so the house needed to be given a more thorough clean than usual, although she was a bit on the obsessive side and her cousin would have said “it’ll do”. 

Then the beds needed making making, fresh towels, bottled water and wrapped snacks put in the guest bedroom (o.k. so the bedroom was formerly one of her daughter’s rooms, still it had been improved upon since Amy moved out twenty years ago.)

Then one had to consider cocktails, dinner, breakfast the next morning.

Better get started she thought, her last thoughts before waking up in an ambulance.

“What happened?” she asked the EMT’s

Well, replied a young and rather studious looking medical assistant: to quote someone: “Time flies, We stumble”.

“Hey that’s Godfrey Just’s quote. I just read it yesterday but never imagined that I would be accomplishing it this soon.”

“OK, she’ll be fine. Her memory is probably better than ours” replied the EMT to his colleagues.

 Julia has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/

D-L's Free Write

Emma sipped her tea. A spring breeze snuck across the kitchen table ruffling her paper napkin.

Outside lilacs and forsythia bloomed, creating a wall between her house and her neighbor's.

The house was silent not like when her kids were little. What in God's name made her spit out four kids in three years? That was before she left the church, telling the priest, "If you want me to have more kids, I'll give them to you to raise." She didn't tell the priest that her doctor told her after the twins that she might not survive another pregnancy.

Her kids were now spread around the world: London, San Francisco, Toronto, D.C.

She remembered how she once dreamed of being able to have a quiet cup of tea. Back then, her throat often hurt from screaming at them. In many ways, it seemed like yesterday. Maybe her screams was why she only heard from them at Christmas or on her birthday and maybe not then. 

She heard Lou-Ann, her next door neighbor holler at her kids.

"Don't," she thought, although she would never say it to her. Time is fleeting. 

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at:. https://dlnelsonwriter.com Her 300 Unsung Women has just been published and is available on Barnes and Nobel. 

Rick's Free Write

People have long said, ‘Time flies.’ But does it really?

Time is inexorable. It plods. If you stare at a clock, especially one without a second hand, it seems to almost stand still.

I know an artist who thought time went according to his pace – however long he took for the project, that met the deadline. As the rest of the production team swirled around him.

Certainly when you are sleeping, time races by. You fall asleep at 9 or 10 or 12 and next thing you realize it’s 6 in the morning. Except for those nights when you can’t seem to fall asleep. Then time moves at an agonizing pace.

Time flies… when you’re having fun… when you’re totally focused on doing something important… when you are spending precious time with friends or loved ones.

The progression of our personal time is not as consistent as the clock. We rush, and rest. We worry, we rejoice. We stumble, fall, hurt, get up, still hurt, at least for awhile. Healing – whether physical or mental – is only ever partial.

None of us knows how many years, how many months, how many seconds we have left. But we are here now. Seize the time.

Rick Adams, an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, is author of the book The Robot in the Simulator, Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Training.

 

 

Morality and sex

Two cats couple on a spring day. When they are done, the male walks away. The female stretches out on the ground. Did I imagine smiles on their faces?

Each spring two swans live on Boston Common. Locals named them Romeo and Juliet and felt badly their eggs never hatched. Why? Locals later discovered the swans were Juliet and Juliet.

Homosexual and lesbian couples exist in the animal world.

"Various non-human animal species exhibit behavior that can be interpreted as homosexual or bisexual, often referred to as same-sex sexual behavior by scientists. This may include same-sex sexual activity, courtship, affection, pair bonding, and parenting among same-sex animal pairs. Various forms of this are found among a variety of vertebrate and arthropod taxonomic classes," according to Wikipedia.  It goes back to Aristotle (384–322 BC) when he observed two male pigeons enjoying themselves.

Historical great minds and leaders have been considered homosexual/lesbian from Socrates to today. To name only a few:

• English King James 1/Scottish King James VI
• Shakespeare
• Leonardo DaVinci
• Walt Whitman
• Julius Caesar   
• U.S. President James Buchanan
• Florence Nightingale
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Alexander the Great
  

Homosexuality/lesbianism has existed in many species since the beginning of time so why the huge brouhaha? How can it be unnatural? Why is it called immoral even if so many species participate? In some societies. Why do some societies accept it and others do not?

Usually homosexuality/lesbianism is between consenting individuals, although enforced sex and pedophilia is another issue.

The idea that sexual activity is a no-no except under certain restrictions such as reproduction or only with a legal partner has come down through the ages although some societies support the idea of multi partners. In some cases it can be ownership and control of a partner. 

So much has been created around something that is as natural as breathing and eating.

I wish people would declare sex as natural and it is between consenting partners to determine who and when. If a man feels more comfortable with another man, a woman with other woman so what? Unless they are doing it on their front lawn when the next door neighbor is having a children's party or a BBQ, who cares.

I wish the same attention was paid to high standards of the morality of lobbing bombs at other people, denying people their rights, setting up financial barriers that the very rich have everything and the rest of the world suffers for lack of food. If groups of people like corporations were considered immoral when they poison the air and water in the name of profit, never mind the health of others, were declared immoral and penalized wouldn't that be better than penalizing what two people do in private?

Frankly, I do care what my husband does sexually based on the agreements between us. I don't care what other people do sexually. It is their business not mine. 

I will continue to care when Palestinians are the victims of genocide or there's another oil spill because a corporation did follow safety regulations. 

Again, silly, silly me.

Visit www.dlnelsonwriter.com

 

Only minor differences - do you see it?

 It's the same. Using a scapegoat to convince people of dangers that are not real.

Germany 1934 - 1945

Jews were labeled for the ills in Germany. First they were removed from positions of responsibility. The Gestapo could pick suspected Jews off the street or enter their homes. Kids were forbidden to go to school, but before that the Gestapo would remove children from classes. Jews were sent on cattle cars to concentration camps where many were tortured and/or killed. This wasn't done the first day when Hitler was in power, but it got worse and worse until some six million Jews were dead.

U.S.A. 2025

The word Jew is replaced by immigrants. They are labeled, without proof) as horrible people, murderers, drug dealers, criminals and insane. The same labels were applied 2015-2020. Many were asylum seekers from countries where they were neither safe nor able to earn a living. They walked for months, risking their lives. There were not enough people able to handle their applications for asylum which under international law they were allowed to apply for.

Kids were separated from the parents and put in cages. They were not properly fed. Some died. Records were not kept to allow parents and children to find each other.

After 20 January 2025 immigrants were arrested. Some were deported to jails in other countries rivaling the German camps in cruelty despite the laws and judicial orders to stop.

They were  procedures for asylum that were never followed. When solutions were proposed by congress one party that had participated in developing the legislature was told by their leader to veto it. They did.

People, not just illegal immigrants but legal immigrants and citizens, were snatched from the street and from their homes. ICE has tried to enter schools to take immigrant children away. Laws that demanded a warrant were overlooked and then the DOJ this past week decreed that a warrant was no longer necessary which means any human can be arrested and/or deported.

Every single person in the U.S. is in danger under this administration! Never, including the Civil War and the movement to oust Roosevelt, has the country been in such danger of destruction. In the case of the Civil War, the U.S. would have continued without the Southern States.

DO SOMETHING NOW. BARRAGE EVER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN AND WOMAN WITH EMAILS, PHONE CALLS, TOWN HALLS, PICKET THEIR OFFICES, GO TO DEMONSTRATIONS. 

My Fantasy

 

My grandmother bought a waffle iron right after the 1929 financial crash. Family tradition was to have a big Sunday lunch then either waffles or French toast for supper.

Eventually my mother inherited it and then I did. Not necessarily every Sunday night, but my daughter and I had many waffle meals, before I surrendered the machine in 1989 when I moved from my loved Riverway Boston condo to France. I don't know if anyone, who shopped the Salvation Army charity store where I left it, bought and used it. I have no idea how much longer it worked. I can only vouch for its first 60 years.

Fast forward to my purchase of a Cannon camera. It worked beautifully for three days when the shutter decided to stay half closed. Neither the store nor the company made good on it.

As a writer before email, I sent tons of manuscripts to publishers. My printer did thousands and thousands of pages, albeit in black and white, within a five year period. Maybe once a year I had to replace the cartridge. I would still love to use the printer, but when I had a new laptop with a Microsoft upgrade they were no longer compatible. All subsequent printers decided working more than a few months was beneath their dignity. As for colored ink cartridges, they deign to spit out a few drops before demanding a replacement.

When we tried to return a food processor that never worked, the clerk at the store where we bought it told us we had to talk to customer service. He did place the call. 

Place! After 15 minutes a human still hadn't picked up the line. We left the defunct processor without a refund or substitute (against store policy) and bought another from another store.

Almost every day some product goes wrong. It can be simple such as the steam iron doesn't want to steam. Thursday's problem was the internet. As writers a non working internet is serious.

A call to our service provider: although shifted from customer service to tech support (?), that produced canned responses some of which bore a relationship to our problem, some who thought the colors on our box were not real. 

It was not SFR's fault the call was in French, which left me translating. A couple of terms I couldn't find in our paper French-English dictionary. If I'd had internet, I might have been able to look up the words on line.

After more than an hour we gave up. Husband Rick wrote that their service was "merde" and went to bed. At least we'd been working as a team with me as translator and him as the person describing to me what I needed to translate. 

In the morning we had a message from a human. We called. He fixed the problem within minutes. 

I'll admit I'm not a patient person, although my patience has increased to maybe five nanoseconds. When I deal with a human, I have mastered being polite and appreciative. I do prefer dealing in English, but can manage in French although I find requests to speak lentement works better with women than men who remember to speak slowly for three or four sentences. Women stay in the slow mode.

What is my fantasy?

I buy something and it works for a reasonable amount of time. If something goes wrong, I can deal with a customer service and/or tech support who can do something about it.

Silly, silly me. 

Visit https://dlnelsonwriter.com

On becoming a writer

 

At four I wanted to write stories that were sequels (I didn't know the word then) to the stories my grandmother and mother read to me daily. With my crayons I'd scribble about Reddy Fox, Old Grandfather Frog, Flossie and Freddy Bobbsey.

The problem?

I couldn't write, therefore I couldn't read my scribbles the next day. 

During my bath, my mother and I would tell double stories where she would start with one or two sentences then I would take over and after a few minutes hand it back to her until we came to an end. My favorite character was a philanthropic snake.

Still not able to read and write, I verbally described what I saw such as "the coals in the fireplace were red." 

That wasn't enough so I started saying things like, "she said," "he said," "the father said after people around me spoke."

That came to an end the day my grandmother and I walked out to get the mail. I laughed and said, "the little girl said laughingly, holding the fat cook's hand." Granted my grandmother did most of the cooking, but she didn't like being called fat. My parents, usually supportive of my imagination, asked me to keep my writing thoughts to myself.

In grade school I wrote mysteries solved by six imaginaryfriends. In 4th grade I started a newspaper for my class and from my junior year in high school, I was a cub reporter for the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. My editor growled lessons, I still use decades later. 

Most of my writing thru uni was academic. When I married and living in Stuttgart with my husband who was in an Army band, I tried writing. There was only pen and paper, plenty of things to observe every where starting out my window on Olga Strasse such as the horse-drawn wagon used for beer deliveries. I just couldn't come up with plots.

Back in the States there were years of just living, a daughter, a divorce, and writing about new businesses, pamphlets, advertising and press releases, renovating a house and grad school, I had no time for fiction.

My housemate tired of hearing "I want to write fiction" asked "What's stopping you?"

The answer was me.

Writing was easier with an IBM Selectric. 

Neighbors who were interested in the Cathar heretics triggered, my desire to fictionalize Emmanuel La Durie's book Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324. Having almost no French, I headed for the Pyrenees. What an experience standing in a 1300 church in a tiny village and know that the mother of the heretic priest had been buried there in the 1300s. 

Despite winning an award for an unpublished novel, I only had rejections for Heretics and Lovers. Much, much later I would use part of the priest who headed the Cathar inquisitions and would become Pope Benedict XII in Murder in Paris as the historical section in my Murder in Paris.

Doubting my abilities, I attended the Paris Writers Workshop where Canadian writer Isabel Huggan encouraged me to keep writing. Thanks to her encouragement, I did.

A neighbor who dressed as a carrot and gave nutrition lessons to kids, triggered the idea for Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook, which covered sexual harassment issues at colleges. The novel won a prize and was published in German and Russian too.

Meanwhile, I was writing short stories that were published in various literary magazines. One of my proudest moments was when my short story Letting Go being read on BBC radio.

I've now published 19 fiction books and three non-fiction including one on the history of abortion. 300 Unsung Women, short bios of women who have fought gender bias in many disciplines, is in the final printing process and an anthology of my short stories and poems, The Corporate Virgin, is working will be available in summer.

Most of my neighbors in my small French village where I now live part time didn't know I wrote until France 3 did a small segment, calling me the Agatha Christie of Argelès.

At this point of my life, I cannot not write. Stories, blogs, essays, descriptions come to me, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes from something I hear or see. Writing is as much a part of me as my love of lobster, love of my husband, love of my dog, not necessarily in that order. Almost every day my fingers touch my keyboard and produce words, many of which are filed away never to be seen, some which will appear in blogs or other sites, and a few which will end up in books.

It's enough. I became a writer.

Visit htpps://dlnelsonwriter.com 

 

 

Free Write - Jar? Bottle Cap?

 

In today's Free Write the writers saw different things. One concentrated on the bottle and the other two on the cap. That's the fun of free writes when more than one person does them together, and what the prompt triggers in each writer. There is no right and wrong in a Free Write.

Rick's Free Write Bottle Cap

Red caps aren’t exactly in favor in most parts of the world these days.

Nor are plastic bottle caps, red or otherwise.

When the new plastic bottle caps came out. and Gunther realized the ring prevented the cap from being completely removed, he was annoyed. As time went by, his annoyance turned to frustration and eventually rage.

Not only did the attached ring make it more difficult to reapply the cap, sometimes when pouring a beverage the cap would slide around and get in the way of the stream, splashing liquid all over the counter or table. Sticky, staining juice.

As he tried to pull harder to break the ring, that often caused a spill too.

Gunther didn’t really care that the new design made it easier to recycle the plastic tops. He didn’t care that it made it easier to recycle everything, bottle and top together.

He wanted things the way they used to be. Why did someone always have to mess with something that wasn’t broken?

Same with computer software. Constant upgrades popping up at the wrong time. By techies who did not understand the way people used the damn machine.

And speaking of red caps, don’t get him started on U.S. politics…

Rick Adams, an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, is author of the book The Robot in the Simulator, Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Training.

 Julia's Free Write - Empty Jar

There it sat - a constant reminder.

Ah the memories – meeting the man who became my husband, that first apartment where the balcony was as large as the flat itself.

Buying our first house – par of an old barn where everything had to be done, including bringing in water, electricity and heating. Our first child was born there.

Then the second house, bought on plans, but where we had a lot of leeway and choice. The birth of a second child.

Years spent living, then came the leaving of the first son for university, followed not long after by the death of my husband.

Still in the house, with a minor child, we got through the years.

Both children, like their parents, had wanderlust, here, there, everywhere.

If the older never returned home for more than a night or two, the younger was a bungee cord or boomerang.

Then the final perfect person entered his life and after 4 years, they left for their own start in their own flat.

This jar is all that remains. A container for all that light, love and living.

 Julia has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/

 D-L's Free Write - Bottle Top

Everyone hates me. What did I ever do to them but secure the liquid in their plastic bottles?

Some dumb politician pushed thru a law in the French parliament. From then on I had to be attached the bottle cap.

I know. I know. Birds and squirrels sometimes SOMETIMES were entangled. But what about the people, hit in the eye when sipping from the bottle or the clean up when liquid spilled because of me?

I'm tiny. The bottles are big and fill up landfills all over the world.

The solution? Glass bottles and metal caps. I can then Rest In Peace. 

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at:. https://dlnelsonwriter.com Her 300 Unsung Women has just been published and is available on Barnes and Nobel.

 

Where is Revere when we need him?

 

Last night Paul Revere left Charleston to warn villagers about the British Army on a maneuver to find the cannons stolen a few weeks before in Boston.

Well, not the real Paul Revere. And if truth be known the real one didn't finish the trip. William Dawes and Samuel Prescott finished the job. 

The 2025 reenactment is taking place as I write this on the 250th anniversary when the people of Lexington and Concord said, "enough is enough" of taxes and rule no one wanted.   

Years ago I was a cub reporter for the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. My assignment was to take the photo of the doctor who won the honor of being that year's Paul Revere. The paper had bought me a Minolta camera because the regular cameras were too heavy for 89-pound me to hold without getting a photo with movement. 

The doctor was polite, but when I got back to the paper, my editor Fred Cole told me the doctor had called furious that he wasted his time because the paper sent a 12-year old child with a Brownie camera to take his photo. 

The next day the photo I took was on the top half of the front page. The doctor called asking for copies. 

My editor said yes then all copies, the contact sheet and negatives went into the trash. "No one insults my staff," he said.

Because it's the 250 anniversary, the National Park Service has planned a huge reenactment of the events.

At the same time there are demonstrations planned around the country to fight against the Trump danger to the country that those farmers and shop keepers started. If we had asked them they probably would have no idea that what they were creating was a form of government that had never existed on the planet. 

The danger today is not a few Lobsterbacks as the British soldiers were called nor a king who only cared about his own power instead of his people. The danger is Trump, his cohorts, billionaires, businessmen who put temporary profit and their own wealth above everything else. 

The population of the Colonies in 1775 was an estimated 2.1 million give or take. Today the U.S. population is over 340 million. On April 5th over 500 demonstrations were held in the U.S. April 19, 2025 more demonstrations are planned. 

The two resistances are important if the Americans want to continue as a country and not revert back to the type of government that caused the citizens of Lexington and Concord to risk their lives. Hopefully if enough is done now, it won't come to that.

300 Unsung Women published

 

Often ignored, these 300 women fought against gender boundaries to fulfill the potential they knew they had. Many suffered indignities in their quests - such as the woman who won the right to teach, but only behind a curtain to not upset male students.

Inventors, activists, scientists, doctors, lawyers, mountain climbers, athletes, historians, artists, writers, 'bad-ass women' and more... these 300 brief biographies highlight the essence of their lives and struggles.

I spent more than two years researching and writing to share information about these brave women who have offered so much to the world - they are forgotten no more.

Available at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504 and Amazon.com. Soon to be available at other book stores.

For more about D-L Nelson, https://dlnelsonwriter.com 

Burying Stories (Lies)

 

Ronald Reagan told the story about the welfare mother who had a Cadillac as an example of what was wrong with welfare. Anyone going into any slum, would not find welfare mothers cruising around in Cadillacs. Most would be struggling to make ends meet.

However, that made up story worked to create animosity toward welfare mothers.

Trump has a new favorite story about a little old lady who was hit in the back of her head with a baseball bat, He thinks horrible people, who commit acts of violence, should be deported.

These stories, usually made up, are repeated to create fear and help the teller push through bad legislation.

Reagan never told stories about women who left abusive relationships and were on welfare because they had a handicapped child and couldn't work to take care of him/her. It didn't cover the situations that many welfare recipients lived through.

Trump, when he talks about the immigrants who are criminals, drug dealers, and mental hospital escapees, doesn't talk about those Latinos, who were farmers and because of treaties, could no longer earn a living. He doesn't talk about people in Latin America where the U.S. supported a dictator after a democratically leader was assassinated with the help of the U.S. He doesn't talk about people who walked for months through horrible conditions because they thought they might have a glimmer of a chance for a better life in the U.S.

Bloomberg has reported that 90% of those sent to El Salvador have no criminal record. But that isn't part of Trump's stories about those that are now living in German concentration camp conditions.

Stories are effective, but they can also be misleading. Yes there has been welfare fraud, and yes there are criminals among some immigrants. But they are the minority and such a small part of the complete story that it warps the truth.

We need the complete story because only telling the bad, hurts too many innocent people. 

Words are part of stories so when Trump uses words like criminal, terrorist, mentally ill he creates a story that doesn't tell the major part of the story. It is like picking up a 300-page prize-winning novel and reading two pages and thinking the novel is no good because of those two pages.

It is worse if someone lies about those two pages over and over and over. To watch the press secretary stand there and magnify the lies for example saying Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a terrorist is inexcusable.

I'm not comparing Reagan with Trump, but both men used the story-telling method to whip up false narratives that hurt others.

It would be wonderful if all lies that pass as true stories were buried, leaving room for true stories or good stories.

Check D-L's website https://dlnelsonwriter.com

 

Constitution Burning

 

 

Danger Fire Danger Fire Danger Fire

Nothing could have prepared the founding fathers for a Donald Trump when they wrote the Constitution. Despite all the differences of opinion at the time, there was a presumption that men in government (no women participated) would be basically of good will. And in case there were not people of good will, there were checks and balances.

Now those checks and balances are being tested. Trump is openly defying the law and when called on it, he is defying the court. The most prominent case of too many is Kilmar Abrego Garcia  who was sent to El Salvador's Auschwitz-style prison admittedly by mistake. Courts including the Supreme Court have ruled get him back or facilitate getting him back.

U.S. President Trump and El Salvador's President Bukele said in a very badly scripted White House appearance they don't have the power to return Kilmar. 

Really? How weak are they? 

The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that Kilmar was a criminal although no evidence has been presented. No due process was followed, a violation of the Constitution.

Kilmar was legally in the U.S., married to a U.S. citizen and has no criminal record.

Trump claims he follows the law. Laughable considering he tried to overthrow an election as well as being a convicted felon. He tries to work around another ruling by changing AP's status and press corp arrangements to avoid complying with a court ruling. 

Now Trump is talking about deporting U.S. citizens who are criminals. After that it is just a small step to deporting non criminal U.S. citizens or making up charges such as disagreeing with Trump policies.

Demonstrate April 19th.

The man has to be stopped before the Constitution is in ashes.

 

Free Write - The Scene

 

 

Just looking at how well it was burnished meant that someone, somewhere, had put a lot of effort and thought into its’ making.

 

Today's prompt was personal. The cane (Brits call them sticks) belonged to Julia's late husband and is now being used as needed by D-L. People have stopped D-L on the street, at airports and in stores to say how unusual and lovely it is. D-L may hate using the cane but appreciates it belong to a late friend and it is original in its design.

 

D-L's Free Write

 

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl. Beautiful on the outside, but inside she was a bitch and a bully. 

 

When a new girl started at her school she did all her mean tricks. The new girl's father was a wizard. To protect his daughter, he turned her tormentor's spirit into an olive tree.

 

The bully girl hated being trapped. She hated being an olive tree.

 

The only attention she received was during harvest when farmers spread orange nets under her and shook her until all the olives fell and were carted away to make oil. 

 

One winter day, many decades later, lightning cut the tree in half. Farmers came to cart the wood away, but the bully's spirit stayed within the one remaining piece of wood,

 

In the spring, a wood carver came by and took the wood back to his studio. There he carved and polished, polished and carved. How it hurt her.

 

When he finished he had a beautiful cane. The carver sold it to an old man. With the cane the old man was once again able to walk into his village and visit with friends,

At home he kept the cane in the kitchen. The girl's spirit was warmed by the fire and loved the aromas of his cooking. Slowly the girl's spirit began to mellow.

 

She was happy when the old man would show the cane to his guests. "It gave me freedom, he would say. The girl, who was no longer a bully, agreed, content she could make someone happy. 

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check her website at:. https://dlnelsonwriter.com Her 300 Unsung Women will be published this month.

Julia's Free Write

There it was, gnarled and knotted: obviously, or perhaps only to those who know woods, an old vineyard branch.

Questions flourished: why had it been cut? A discard or chosen specifically? Which vineyard? After all, it wasn’t even sure that it came from the country where it was found, as at least one owner had been German and this appeared in Switzerland!

Where did the horn which was used for the handle originate? A former pet goat? Found and picked up to recycle?

Just looking at how well it was burnished meant that someone, somewhere, had put a lot of effort and thought into its making.

For years it lived in the hall cupboard, unused, province unknown, unloved.

It is perhaps very fitting that such an object finally is being used by someone who not only appreciates its’ beauty but was also a friend of one of the original owners.

Julia has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/

 

Rick's Free Write

Guiseppe had lived by himself on the hillside above the village in the Italian Piedmont for nigh on 20 years now. Since his beloved Angela had died after a fall on the rocky road. His only companion was a majestic grey heron who frequented the small pond on the property.

Guiseppe had almost domesticated the heron, whom he called Garibaldi, after his national hero. At first he would toss breadcrumbs to the bird but eventually he had him literally eating out of his hand.

Garibaldi would arrive in the fall and depart in the spring, perhaps to cooler climes in Switzerland. Guiseppe’s anticipation heightened each year as the trees began to turn brilliant colors.

In September Guiseppe was out walking, stumbling occasionally, as his knees were becoming frail. As he approached the pond he saw a familiar grey and white form. Except it was lying on the ground. As he got closer he immediately recognized Garibaldi, who was in distress.

He carried the bird carefully, stumbling as he did, to the one-room stone house, and put Garibaldi on the table.

Alas, the bird’s strength gave out and he died while Guiseppe was stroking his feathers.

After a proper period of mourning, Guiseppe decided to honor his friend and keep a part of him for the rest of his life. He sliced a branch of an old olive tree for a walking stick and fashioned Garibaldi’s right foot bone into a handle.

It gave him great comfort to still have his companion as he walked the hills.

Rick Adams, an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, is author of the book The Robot in the Simulator, Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Training.

 

 

 

Under the American Radar

 

Under the American Radar

 

My husband asked me to post this only after he safely returned to European soil.

He was traveling to the Unhinged States of MAGA for a conference and was genuinely afraid of being detained or deported by out-of-control immigration authorities.

His message:

In Fear of My Birth Country

You’ve probably heard the news about the French scientist who was traveling to a conference in Texas. When he landed in the US, immigration officials insisted on checking his mobile phone. On it they found messages with his colleagues which disparaged ‘scientific’ policies of Trump and his cartel of know-nothings. The French scientist was deported back to France and not allowed to attend the conference.

This is not an isolated case, nor a misunderstanding. US goons (CBP, ICE, FBI, etc.) are systematically snatching up students, professors and others whose only crime is supporting oppressed people such as the Palestinians. The detainees have told stories of being thrown in cold, barren cells for days and weeks, not allowed even a phone call to an attorney or family member. They are not allowed a hearing – simply transported to a way station in Louisiana or shipped to whatever fourth-world prison the US can get to take them. (Look up habeus corpus and the Patriot Act. "Patriot Act II" Provisions in H.R. 10 (As Passed by House) | American Civil Liberties Union)

US Secretary of State ‘Little Marco’ Rubio recently stated that “Freedom of Speech” is only for US citizens. Non-citizens do not have freedom on speech on American soil (or off, apparently).

As I write this, I am planning to attend a conference in Florida. I am not a foreign scientist. Worse, in the minds of the Trumpistas, I am a foreign journalist. Specifically, I am an aviation journalist, Swiss citizen.

As a foreigner, there’s a good chance I will be asked to present my phone and computer at the US immigration checkpoint. (Not sure if that will be in Frankfurt as I emplane or Orlando as I deplane.)

As of mid-March, there would have been all sorts of pro-democracy, pro-Ukrainian, pro-Palestinian people, anti-MAGA, anti-Musk, anti-Drumpf, anti-Putin messaging: on my Facebook feed, Messenger shares, email inbox and sent folder… pretty much everywhere in my digital footprint.

So I started to purge those messages…

I had no conception how difficult that would be. Between Facebook/ Meta and Google alone, there are layers upon layers upon layers of nooks and crannies where they capture and store your data. (Even if you thought you opted out.)

I was amazed to find out, for example, that Facebook has a section which logs videos I watch on the phone and computer. Mostly videos of cute dogs and stupid construction faux pas. But nonetheless, FB captured that data, apparently so it could ‘tailor’ what it sends me to my ‘preferences.’ Maybe they’ll start sending me videos of cute dogs making construction mistakes.

I found photos (and the occasional anti-Troomp or anti-JD Dunce cartoon – you remember, the a**-kissing hillbilly VP who likened DJT to Hitler) which I thought I had long ago deleted. Only to find

them in a Trash file, which required another step to fully delete (maybe).

To get rid of friends, photos, messages, files, etc. sometimes required a simple ‘Delete’ button. Other times it required digging down through the layers, finding instructions on the internet, and ultimately just trial and error (wonder what happens if I click this symbol?)

I decided, on the advice of many, to buy a new cheap – clean – computer to take on the trip. I would load only essential software on it: my business-only non-MS Outlook email account, a word-processing program – not MS Word), LinkedIn (only business messages), and the programs to update my aviation newsletter and website. When I get to Florida, I will attempt to restore my personal email and other software, so I will need to remember some usernames and passwords.

That was the easy part. The phone is more problematic. I have thought about a ‘burner’ phone, but that may appear too suspicious. So I have focused on purging my phone of potentially offending messages, while still retaining the ability to call or message my wife in France or a friend (or attorney) in the States… and leaving a couple photos of our cute dog to appear normal. (Thought about switching phones with my wife – saying I grabbed hers by mistake - but that would require even more clean up, and much as she hates the phone she doesn’t want me messing with it – understood.)

As I was unfriending, restricting or blocking long-time friends, it felt like something of a betrayal. I simply did not want to risk them sending me political messages while I was enroute and not having opportunity to delete them before the checkpoint. Or have immigration type their name into a search engine and discover our share ideology.

It’s my intent to restore my friends when I am ‘safely’ back in Europe. They are the primary reason I am still on FB, though we are steadily moving to other platforms such as Substack (which has a lot of great writers of thoughtful commentaries).

Am I a hypocrite? Frankly, if I was not the chair of the conference I am attending, I would not make the trip. We’re talking a substantial part of our current income. And with Musk mucking around with Social Security, our pension – to which we ‘donated’ all our US careers - may disappear too.

I am a rebel and fighter by nature. I’m trying to live to continue to fight the battle. Much as I would like to tell the immigration officer to F-off, that’s not a battle I am going to win. He/ she is low level, following orders and misguided instincts. I am best at fighting with words, with persuasion, and I cannot do that from a detention cell.

Out of this experience may come a book, one for which I had an idea long ago when the Surveillance State was just ramping up – tracking our phones, our computers, cameras on streets and roadways, in businesses, satellites, drones and other snooping devices… all meant to control us. (Good thing they cannot yet read minds…)

I reference my ‘birth country’ in the title of this blog. Yes, I was born in the USA… but that was a very different America in the late 20th century. I left a dozen years ago because I was in love with a woman who lived in Switzerland and France, and I quickly fell in love with Europe too.

I am angry beyond words at how the Musk/ Trump gangsters and DOGE-bags are destroying the States and anything else they can get their hands on to make their rich friends richer and punish anyone who disagrees with their current whims. They are the scourge of our lifetime, as Hitler was in our parents’ era. I am

saddened, too, that our children and grandchildren, and those of our friends, are caught in this maelstrom, which cannot end well – even for the MAGAs.

If you’ve read this far, you know I am back home, or almost, in Europe, ready to restore and expand my connections… and resist with every ounce of me the nightmare of America.

LIVE. RESIST.

Note: My husband did not have a problem but three French scientists, who were planning to attend the same conference, were pulled aside, had their passports confiscated, taken to a room and questioned. Eventually they were released.